Why Having Fun May be the Key to a Higher Performance Team as a Humanitarian and International Development Leader

Is your team running on empty, losing motivation, or just plain burned out? What if the solution was as simple as having more fun?

In this episode of The Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader, you’ll explore why too many supervisors in our sector see fun as a distraction—when in fact, it’s one of the most powerful tools for team resilience, creativity, and long-term performance.

In this episode you'll discover:

• How fun at work can directly reduce burnout and increase engagement.
• Why accountability and fun aren’t mutually exclusive—and how to do both effectively.
• Get practical, budget-free strategies to create a more vibrant, motivated work culture starting today.

Tune in now to learn how injecting fun into your leadership style can energize your team and transform your work environment—no extra resources required.

What Is Your Leadership Style?  Free Quiz:

Want to know how to lead better?  It starts by understanding your leadership style.   To find out yours, take my free quiz “What Is Your Leadership Style” - you’ll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.  Just click on the link fill out your quiz and click submit.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

How having fun helps you and your team grow and achieve more. Find out in today's episode.

Welcome to the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader podcast. The podcast helping humanitarian and development supervisors make a greater impact by taking control of your time, leading more inclusively and empowering your team all the while avoiding stress. Burnout and overwhelm. I'm your host, leadership coach and former aid worker, Torrey peace. Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hello, my aspiring modern development and humanitarian leader. I hope you're having a wonderful week. So today we're gonna talk about having fun, and I hope that I can [00:01:00] make even less listening experience for you a little fun. I'm not gonna sing or anything like that, but I do have some examples that I think you'll be interested in.

In terms of demonstrating the impact and the power that having fun can have for you and your team. So in this episode, you're going to discover the consequences of not having fun while working. Why having fun and producing high quality work actually go hand in hand and what it means to have fun while working.

So. When we think about the humanitarian and development sector, one of the words that's come up a lot over the last few years, and even more so since the Covid Pandemic has been burnout, loss of motivation.

Leaders who feel uninspired or demotivated or [00:02:00] discouraged and frustrated. So as we think of how the modern leader conducts themselves and the type of environment that they create, the modern leader knows how to have fun and helps their team do so as well. And the words, "I had so much fun, I burned out," no one has ever said, because if you're having fun, by definition, you are not burning out.

And as a matter of fact, having fun also leads to overcoming the very things that are a crisis in our sector in terms of burnout, loss of motivation, frustration, and so on. So one thing I think is important to note is that we do not have to separate fun from [00:03:00] our day-to-day work.

I think sometimes we think that we're either having fun or we're working and that they both can't go together. And I actually found this to be so important to emphasize that when I was in Timor and I was the country manager, we actually made it as one of our team values having fun at work because I knew that it would help us with one of our other goals, which was to make that particular country program the best place to work in Timor Leste.

And when something is fun, people wanna talk about it. They wanna participate in it, they wanna share it, they wanna come back to it and they look forward to it. And the same goes for in the workplace. We can create a culture of fun. And when we have [00:04:00] fun, we want to come back. We want to be part of it. I think sometimes people think if we are having fun,

then we are not doing quality work. That it's impossible to have fun and be serious about getting quality work done. And that maybe if we are having fun all the time, that people could be slacking off, that they're not taking things seriously. And so we don't get the results that we want. But I think that's actually because this mentality is if you are working in a fun environment, people will not be concerned about doing good work or they won't be as productive, but there are actually studies that show the opposite.

One great example is Google. And my husband actually worked for Google for a bit and [00:05:00] I remember him telling me all the different ways that Google allows people on the job to have fun. And sometimes those things are separated from the work. So for example, a ping pong table or, video games or various things that they would definitely have to take a break

in order to participate in. But sometimes those things can also be part of the work or the way they work. And why do you think that a company as big as Google and as productive and as profitable as Google emphasizes the ability to take breaks, to have fun and to create this environment where things are not taken so seriously. And it's because they know that fun is linked with creativity and productivity.

So do not [00:06:00] confuse having fun with not holding people accountable for their results. These two things are not the same. You can do both. Another reason why I think many leaders think they cannot be friends with their team members, because that if they're friends with their team members, then their relationship changes and their team members will not listen to them or not take them seriously or will slack off.

But what really is going on there is that you as the leader are afraid that you will not be able to control your team if you're having fun or if you are friends, that you will not be able to take the actions required to hold the other person accountable. Because there are always things we can do as supervisors, especially to hold people accountable.

It does not have to do with whether we are friends with them or not. And I get this mindset, I understand [00:07:00] it, but if you committed as a leader to holding your team accountable for quality results, then it wouldn't matter if you're having fun or not, or if you're friends or not, because those things are separate.

There's holding people accountable and then there's having fun. We can do both. And it's actually your own thinking or your perspective, which is preventing you from having difficult conversations, which would hold people accountable, not being friends with the person or not the fun part. You can separate the two.

But also just to say that having fun also does not require being friends with your team. I notice that when we have fun in my course, like I try to create an environment where people are relaxed, where they feel engaged, but also like they're able to [00:08:00] try new things and, and one of the best ways to do that is by having fun.

By not taking ourselves so seriously and by not taking the content so seriously, I actually tell them, have fun with this. I know if they do not have fun when they're practicing coaching with their team, that they are more likely to give up on it. Because if they take it too seriously, if they take the learning process too seriously, which by definition requires failure, then they're going to probably give up and not move forward. So having fun is also actually part of a growth mindset, but also part of encouraging ourselves and others to try new things. And when we are not afraid of failure, we tend to grow more and try new things.

And when we are having fun, we are not afraid of failing because part of [00:09:00] fun in play, because those go hand in hand, is not taking things so seriously. So if we don't get it right, that's okay, because we are having fun. We're not beating ourselves up about it. And this creates a more innovative environment.

It creates a environment more conducive to learning. It creates, a more motivated environment. So while we are learning, while I'm teaching, I try to introduce or have fun with, the participants, with the students. With the leaders because when we are having fun, we are more open to not getting something right or perfect and things are less serious.

You know, when we think about like perfectionism as well, if I think by definition something that's like if we are trying to produce [00:10:00] something that's perfect, it usually means that we're not. We're probably not having fun while we're doing it. We could be trying to produce something high quality and having fun, but if we're trying to get it right, there's this pressure that we put on ourselves that if we don't get it right, then there's something wrong with us.

And so if we are having fun instead. Which means that we're allowed to mess up. We're allowed to be ridiculous. We're allowed to fail. Then we don't have that pressure, but we can still have fun and produce high quality work. And the other thing that's I think is important to mention is that having fun does not require a budget.

And I remember when we made this one of our values in Timor that we were going to have more fun at work. And we were talking about how can [00:11:00] we do that? Like what were some ways that they wanted to have more fun at work? And you know, they came up with some really good ones. But one of the things that they suggested was to create a Zumba team.

And to have Zumba and that was nothing wrong with that, especially 'cause it was gonna be after hours and whatever. So. We had started looking at, okay, what is it require to create a Zumba team? And next thing I know, they came up with this budget for everyone having t-shirts and matching Zumba outfits.

And then we needed speakers and then maybe we even needed a screen to show, you know, the, the Zumba steps on the screen for everyone. And oh my gosh. So I had to step in and say, look. Let's try to do this without having to require a budget. And they did it and we ended up doing it. We had a microphone and a speaker already from a lot of the [00:12:00] parties, like Christmas parties and things that we had had in the past that we used, and we did not need Zumba outfits.

Everyone could just bring even their organizational t-shirt or just whatever they wanted to wear. And we did it. We still had the Zumba. So it's possible to have fun without needing a budget. So what are some ways that we can make the office or the work environment more fun? Well, here's some ways that I found helpful.

One is just music. And this could be something you do with others, or it could just be something that like for, for me, for example, I like to listen to music while I'm working on a report or something that requires focused work.

I find music to be really helpful to concentrate, but also it just makes things a little bit more fun. Another thing is making games out of heavy tasks. So maybe you have to review a budget, but maybe you make a [00:13:00] game out of it or something like, who can find a certain a particular number, or, just come up with some kind of way of making it a little bit more fun.

Playing around with practicing new skills. Like I said, in my course, I encourage leaders as they're learning coaching to just play around with different skills, not have to get it all right, not have to get it perfect, not worry about if they're asking the right question to just play around with it. And usually that actually leads to them growing faster than they would if they weren't playing around or having fun. Having one of your team members teach others on the team how to do something. For example, maybe there's a hobby that they have that they could come in and teach. One of our team members taught some of the others how to make sauerkraut. Things like that, and that's more of a team building [00:14:00] exercise, but still, uh, it can be something that, you know, ways to have fun in the office.

You could even do it during lunchtime. Icebreakers are always a good one. I know those were really popular in Timor. Asking your team, how can we have more fun? What does fun look like to your team? How would they define it? How can you integrate more fun scenarios throughout your workday? So I want you to try at least one of these things this week.

Maybe it's just having a conversation with your team around what fun means to them. Start there and then implement one of the things that they choose and see the result. What do you have to lose?

All right. Until next week, keep evolving. Bye for now.

Are you the type of leader that tells others what [00:15:00] to do or to let them figure it out for themselves? Understanding your leadership style is a first step to deciding what's working for you and what's not. To find out your leadership style, take my free quiz. What is your leadership style? You'll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team, and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.

Just click on the link in the show notes, www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz. Fill out your quiz and click submit. So what are you waiting for? Go to www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz and discover your leadership style now. Your team will Thank you for it.